Google Reader: time for contingency planning

The problem with free is that it comes with a best effort service agreement and nothing more. Over the past couple of years monitoring tools have came and went and businesses like Delicious have pivoted out of being useful to PR people. Overnight Google has announced further reductions of its product portfolio, the most significant for PR people was that Google Reader will be shut down on July 1, 2013. Google has offered a migration path through Google Takeout

The best alternative that I have found to Google Reader thus far has been Samuel Clay’s Newsblur which has a freemium model. For the majority of PR activity the free version should suffice, but from personal experience I found the paid for version well worth the money. It also has a great set of mobile applications. If you use the star functionality to save posts, I recommend that you look at Pinboard; a paid for social bookmarking tool; the more people it has users, the more the next person pays so getting on sooner rather than later would be a good idea.

From previous experience moving away from Delicious, I would advise that you plan for this migration sooner rather than later as services become overwhelmed.